by Amanda Coyle

Created on: May 15, 2008

Human beings are effected everyday by various environmental and social conditions for several reasons. The question is to determine why these events occur and why we think that way. Assume you are at a professional baseball game and get up to go to the concession stand to buy a hot dog. While you are gone, three men suddenly jump out of the stands and attack the first base coach. When you come back to your seat, you see the men being hauled away by the police. Since you missed the attack, you ask your friend what happened. He tells you what happened. You next ask, "Why did he do that?" He replies, "Because they are a bunch of idiots!" Later that night you are thinking about what happened and what your friend said. You begin to reflect upon the incident and come up with ideas, based upon social psychology, as to why the men have done what they did and why your friend said what he said. Based on this event you take into effect areas of deindividuation, group influence, miscellaneous factors, and fundamental attribution errors.

Deindividuation is a personal loss of self identity that happens frequently in groups of people. The person loses all of their beliefs to conform to the "norm" of the group they are a part of. The individuals are in a sense "brainwashed" into thinking one consistent belief in the heat of the moment. This could be a leading factor to why the men attacked the coach. Deindividuation would cause the men to forget about laws and standards and just allow them to react in an irrational way. The men could have gotten so frustrated with the game that they decided to work together and get their point across to everyone. This could have happened due to the first base coach not directing their favorite team in a fashion that they wanted. Many times we are stuck in this situation where we get so wrapped into an event or environment that we forget where we are and only focus on what we want. The men shared this same mentality by showing that they were going to attack the coach because they wanted him to do something differently.

Deindividuation might not be the reason but it is a factor to keep in mind. Another factor we should look at is group influence. The men could have been apart of a larger group and forced to attack the coach. Large groups tend to have a great amount of peer pressure built into them. The smaller group of men could have been peer pressured, by a some what larger group, into attacking a coach because they did not agree with what

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